Sunday, March 2, 2008

Cisco introduced a new aggregation platform powered by its 40-core "QuantumFlow" processor and designed for massive scalability in packet intelligence in both service provider and enterprise networks. The new Cisco Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 1000 is the company's most significant new product since the CRS-1 debuted in 2004.

The Cisco Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 1000 series, which was developed over more than five years at a cost in excess of a $250 million, packs up to 20 million packet per second (PPS) forwarding rate performance in a compact single router platform. As such, the ASR 1000 could be used to consolidate a number of networking appliances, including firewall, IPSec VPNs, deep-packet inspection (DPI) and Session Border Controllers (SBC). Over 42 patents were filed on the Cisco Aggregation Services Router 1000 Series.

The ASR 1000 features IOS XE software, a virtualized IOS implementation optimized for compact routers at the edge to deliver in-service upgrades. In addition to the rich IOS edge feature set, IOS XE provides IOS command line control, to provide a familiar look and feel for IOS users. Cisco also highlighted the green credentials of the new platform, saying that the elimination of multi-device, multi-vendor elements in the network dramatically lessens both the architectural complexity for service providers and enterprises as well as their carbon footprints.

Cisco is announcing three versions: a 3-slot chassis with up to 15MPPS performance, an 8-slot version with up to 20MMPS, and a 12-slot version with up to 20MMPS. The two larger systems are 40G ready.

Cisco also named several early customers of the ASR 1000, including NTT, Lufthansa Systems, and Wachovia.http://www.cisco.com